Deja vu all over again: coverage of Trump
I read roundups of the news every day, and I continually get that deja vu feeling.
Sometimes I even wonder if I’m looking at a cached version of the news. But no; there are a few themes that are rammed home day and day after day.
The first is the “Trump administration is in chaos” theme. A subset of this is the theme “Trump is going crazy and is dreadfully unhappy” or “Some member of the administration or relative of Trump is going crazy and is dreadfully unhappy.”
Then there’s the “Republicans will lose in 2018” theme.
After that we have the “Democrats lost in 2016 because they failed to successfully spin things to better appeal to those racist, bigoted, stupid white people in the rust belt, and next time we should do a better job of pretending to serve those idiots” articles.
Next we have the perennial favorite “The world hates us even more than before because of Trump.”
Lastly we have “Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia.”
I’m sure I missed a few. But those are the basics.
And the MSM runs these worthless stories in order to undermine Trump.
If it wasn’t already painfully obvious to everyone by now, the MSM runs the propaganda of the Democrat party.
I think we should start referring to these people as purveyors of the olds. I rarely hear anything new.
It’s to the point where I just cruise right on by almost all of these stories and it’s not just mainstream media sites but conservative ones also. Hot Air seems to have about three of these a day that I don’t even bother looking at anymore. I’m sure there are kernels of truth in some of them but it’s all pointless in the end.
The journolists must closely tend the ball of yarns, for fear that any narrative drift will cause it to unwind with progressive force.
not just mainstream media sites but conservative ones
Beware overlapping and convergent interests in the left-right nexus.
One really interesting thing of the Trump era has been the need of so many on the Right to absolutely 100% stake out a position and guard it like a newborn infant. The Trump lovers are one extreme and the Never Trumpers are just as bad with the added fun of oodles of condescension mixed in.
I’ve heard commentators I generally respect talking about whether Trump will win in 2020. We didn’t know if Trump would win in 2016 until what, 11pm election night? And people are reporting on the results of the 2020 campaign now?
In other news proving how evil he is: he gained 3 lbs; ate an extra scoop of ice cream; his ring finger is only marginally longer than his forefinger, but he is a testosterone raging brute anyway; and bringing industrial jobs back to America cannot be done and we don’t want them anyway.
Well what can you expect. He’s a Republican … sort of. “The worst people in the world.”
“The worst people in the world” … Ha. Ranks right up there with “Deplorables” and “Je suis Charlie”.
“No. I’m Spartacus” he said.
Does George Will still wear a bow tie?
Beyond Gorsuch, a slight gain in tracking down illegal aliens, and correcting a few of bho’s executive orders; djt’s greatest achievement has been driving the left bonkers.
Griffin:
It’s not love. It’s not worship. It’s principles before principals. Only time will tell whether Trump will or can follow the former and to what degree, and if others will follow suit. So far, it is difficult to discern cause and effect with all the actors in loud contention.
Correcting Obama Executive orders is a big deal and that might be the high point of the Trump era. Of course every time Trump gets some decent press and appears to be presidential the media and lefties start whining and sound like a Greek Corus in a tragedy. This will be a never ending story about ‘he done us wrong’, kind of like a country western song.
What Parker said.
I have reached the stage where I ignore most of the anti-Trump stuff, given that most of the previous anti-Trump stuff has been refuted.
For example , the Russia-shouting before the election seemed to me a convenient cover for Hillary/Bill/Podesta links to Russia, not to mention Obama’s telling Russia in 2012 to “wait until after the election.” Not to mention how Obama responded with scorn in the 2012 debates to Romney’s viewing Russia as an enemy.
I knew I was voting for a big-mouthed egomaniac, so those who keep shouting “Trump is a big-mouthed egomaniac” do not get my attention. What politician is NOT a big-mouthed egomaniac?
“After that we have the “Democrats lost in 2016 because they failed to successfully spin things to better appeal to those racist, bigoted, stupid white people in the rust belt, and next time we should do a better job of pretending to serve those idiots” articles.” — Neo
Were you by any chance referring to this one?
Some of the arguments actually make good points, but it does boil down to look like your cabbage.
http://www.businessinsider.com/liberals-can-win-if-they-stop-being-so-annoying-2017-7
(via NRO here, with some interesting commentary)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449629/josh-barro-democrats-hamburger-problem-liberal-judgment-guarantees-political-failure
The Trump lovers are one extreme and the Never Trumpers are just as bad with the added fun of oodles of condescension mixed in.
I fail to see why those who support Trump now that he won the election have to be “Trump lovers” and “extreme.”
I didn’t like Obama and thought he had a thin resume but there were no riots or violence.
Mike K,
By Trump lovers I guess I am referring to those who think he can do no wrong and no matter what he does he is really just playing seventh degree chess or whatever they are always saying. I have been mostly pleased with him to this point but am not some blind apologist.
Didn’t like it with the ridiculous Obama fawning and don’t care for it with Trump just because I support most of his policies.
This is why I don’t believe the enemedia, and don’t listen to or read it.
The news keeps repeating because Trump keeps repeating. The same attempted undermining of the first amendment and propaganda against a free press. The same bungling of foreign relations (we’re going to join with the Russians to prevent election hacking! We’re NOT going to join with the Russians to prevent election hacking! We’re going to partner in Syria. We’re basically going to get Putin everything he wants (OK, that hasn’t been explicitly said yet) ). On that note, the same repeated, never explained, mystifying defense of Putin. Trump’s legacy may be that he’s turned the GOP into a pro-Russia party.
On that note, the drip-drip-drip of info suggesting collusion – now there’s a previous undisclosed eighth attendee to the Donald Jr. meeting, a Russian accused of money laundering and with ties to Aglarov to boot.
The same progression and evolution of the defense “There was never any meetings! OK, there were meetings, about adoption. OK there were meetings and oppo research came up but there wasn’t any collusion. OK there was collusion but it’s not illegal and everyone colludes!” The same NOT doing anything to get health care passed (and the same excuses from his followers that it’s somehow now not the president’s job to push his own agenda). The same backing and filling and twisting and whining about what a victim he is. The same unreleased tax returns. The same throwing his own intelligence community under the bus. The same throwing fellow Republicans under the bus, actively working to primary them because they didn’t fall in line with the capo. The same evidence, day after day, that this man is unfit and unqualified to be President.
This is all news. Our news media is pretty bad and definitely slanted, but these things are real even if you don’t watch/read anything but sources that confirm your biases.
Maybe it will turn around. The polls you don’t believe have him at a dismal approval rating (you’ll believe the polls, though, and tout them if they ever go above 50%). They show increasing support for impeachment.
Maybe he’ll do fine and 2018 won’t lose congress and 2020 won’t lose the Presidency. But I don’t know. This has been worse than I thought it would be (and I thought it would be pretty bad).
Bright spots are the judicial appointments. That’s about it as far as I can tell.
Didn’t like it with the ridiculous Obama fawning and don’t care for it with Trump just because I support most of his policies.
Well said Griffin.
Apologies for the repeated postings. A few more things. For someone touted for his loyalty, Trump sure does throw a lot of people under the bus. Today it’s Sessions.
Which I’m good with, because Sessions does love himself some unconstitutional civil forfeiture.
He also threatened Republican senators today. This is how a statesman builds consensus and buy-in… /sarc
It only works if you have the country with you. Trump’s got his base. But that’s it. And it’s not anywhere near 50%.
Sorry Bill but that is ridiculous. You’ve decided it’s going to be bad and now everything is bad in your mind. Judicial appointments, strong mostly conservative cabinet, rolling back a bunch of Obama era regulations (which I would think you being a lifelong Republican would love) are just a few of the positives.
The twitter stuff is stupid and I wish he were more disciplined with it but it’s who he is and the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ stuff is pure left wing media propaganda that again I would think someone who has been on the right for his whole life would see.
So if he doesn’t do anything that is bad but if tries to push the senate to do what they have promised a gazillion times that is bad. I listened to that speech to the senators and it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a president.
Again Bill you are seeing things the way you want them to be to fit your preconceptions.
And my last comment on this matter that can’t be said enough.
HE IS NOT HILLARY CLINTON!
That was our only other option.
Again Bill you are seeing things the way you want them to be to fit your preconceptions.
I don’t really think I am. At any rate, I see a lot of people seeing things they want to see them on the right as well. It’s common to think our opinions are formed through logic and facts and our political opponents are just falling for propaganda. For example, I think the new Trump-hugging GOP has lost its mind. I never would have predicted this.
I’ve got a lot of antipathy toward Trump, certainly. So think what you want. But my concern from day one has been that he was going to destroy the conservative movement and I think that any of the “good” that people bring up is, except for the judicial appointments, just temporary. His EOs will be overturned just as Obama’s were. And it’s quite possible they’ll be overturned in 2020 after two years of complete impotence having lost congress in 2018 if things don’t turn around. He doesn’t seem to be able to get any real legislation through. The two runs at health care have been embarrassing. It doesn’t even feel like he was trying this last time around. He knows his base will just blame the big, bad, GOPe.
Furthermore, it’s not “normal”, nor particularly politically skillful, for Presidents to threaten members of their own party in public with being primaried. The GOP’s memory has gotten short – up until about 5 minutes ago Reagan’s 11th commandment was the common wisdom. If Trump on purpose causes the Republicans to lose a couple of senate seats his goose is well and truly cooked.
Trump has moved the GOP a number of points (from 12% in 2015 to 30% today) more approving of Putin than they were before he came on the scene. Why?
“strong mostly conservative cabinet”
Jeff Sessions is in love with civil forfeiture. That’s not conservative (or constitutional).
I like many of the others OK.
Trump is planning on giving back to Russia some compounds in New York and Maryland. Why?
I’m not a conspiracy theorist (really). But the Russian thing has bugged me from the start of Trump’s campaign. He swings wildly on everything else. On Russia he is staunch. Won’t say anything bad about Putin. Keeps throwing his own IC under the bus by suggesting Russia didn’t try to meddle in our elections (and declares the controversy finished after he “asked Putin strongly, in two different ways, ‘Did you do this?'”).
We rightly criticised the cr@p out of Obama for promising “flexibility”. Why are we OK with Trump appearing to give concession after concession to Russia, especially when it seems clear Russia at least tried to meddle in our election?
If we had a real media in this country they would be reporting on the great policy debates between the GOP and the Dems. They would be providing the citizens with facts about the issues being debated. What we have instead is the MSM debating Trump and lying about him and the the issues.
The Dems have no policies. They’re too busy blathering about how the Russians stole the election from their candidate and muttering about impeaching a President who has been in office only six months. Investigate and impeach – they don’t care about the business of the country. We’re dealing with rogue regimes in Iran and North Korea, aggressive regimes in China and Russia, Islamist terrorists around the world, a sputtering economy, record debt, a health care system that is pricing average citizens out of the market, and much more. But the progressives can’t be bothered by those issues. Investigate and impeach – it’s what’s for dinner.
Trump is an imperfect man. However, he seems to love this country and wants to solve our problems. IMHO, he’s being obstructed at every turn by the progressive cabal (Dems, MSM, Hollywood, academia, Antifa, BLM, George Soros, etc.). Who’s side am I on? Trump, warts and all.
OK, for real, last post for the night (I think).
Regarding “seeing just what we want to see”, every time Trump makes a significant political blunder his most loyal supporters talk about what a strategic genius he is. Case in point – he fired Comey (big mistake, as it led to a special prosecuter) and publicly threatened him with supposed “tapes” (publicly threatened him over twitter, rather than quietly in person, making Trump look like a petty d_bag).
Then Comey testified before Congress. The Word of the Day at that point was that Trump, by threatening tapes, “forced Comey to tell the truth”. It was a brilliant, 3D chess strategic move.
Trump just had an interview with the NYT where he’s now shifted the narrative back:
emphasis mine
A minor point, perhaps. But it goes to show – Trump’s most hardline supporters can’t accept the fact that the transition from CEO of a private company to an INCREDIBLY PUBLIC position like the Presidency is not one Trump is navigating particularly well.
To latch on to one aspect of Neo’s post, yes, I too find all the Trump coverage exhausting. But for different reasons than many of you. I always just wanted a boring President. Now I’ve got DJT in-face 24×7.
Today i announce i am withdrawing my support for donald trump effective immediately. This man is an idiot, period. If you don’t want people suspicious of you colluding with Putin then stop saying nice things about Putin, just go out there and start torching him. If you don’t want people to be suspicious of you colluding with Russia, then stop hiring so many people with ties with Russia. If you don’t want the fake news media to take your words out of context then stop talking to them or tweeting stupid s***
I’ll be happy if Trump continues to appoint conservative judges, roll back regulations, executive orders, fake treaties, and Title IX crap, support our allies and vex our enemies.
I think this is doable. Fixing Obamacare may not be.
Oh, one more thing … avoid royal screw-ups.
So far he has.
Fingers crossed.
Sorry to say Bill, but you have gone around the bend in the river. Yes, we can agree djt remains a fill in the blank ___. However, he remains POTUS. Are you weeping for the moderartion of the messiah? Or perhaps the days of Slick Willy or Jimma, fear the rabbit, Carter? Seriously, what do you desire? Feeble oppositiom to Madame President or feel free to heckle POTUS Trump. ???
I always just wanted a boring President. Now I’ve got DJT in-face 24é—7.
Bill: I love boring! I would have loved Romney as POTUS.
Except I have a bad feeling if Romney had beaten Hillary last year, we would still be looking at over 50% of the prog crazy we see now directed at Trump.
Today i announce i am withdrawing my support for donald trump effective immediately. This man is an idiot, period.
Dave: Seriously?
Hmmm….
Now imagine that the MSM was absolutely in love with Trump and supported his every move, thought and breath, while hushing up, hiding, or spinning positively all his shenanigans, lies, and illegalities while what an extraordinarily intelligent creature he was.
Hope and Change, yessirree. And Awe!!!
Yes, close your eyes and imagine….
Because that, folks, is what we were treated to from 2009 to 2016
Should be, “…while gushing daily about what…”
OP is why I stopped following the news about two months ago. The narrative is moving very loudly at a snail’s pace.
How about more posts about Russian Lit and current politics, or art or something?
“Seriously, what do you desire?”
Parker – I am glad HRC is not President, but always hated the choice we got.
What do I want? Well, I’d be thrilled if tomorrow Trump resigned and we got Mike Pence for President.
I’m not a huge Pence fan, but I’d be really happy if that happened.
There’s an old conservative maxim, forgotten in our day: Character Matters. I hold to that. And not out of some kind of disdain for uncouth characters.
When I first started learning about DJT the first thing that was pretty clear, to me at least, is that fundamentally he’s dishonest. He’s also a bully. He treats people like cr@p. Bullies and Liars are my least favorite people. He literally won the Presidency while making up stupid schoolyard nicknames for his opponents.
He doesn’t appear to have much of a grasp of policy. He’s fraudulent (he had to settle a. 25MM fraud case before he took the Presidency). He’s treated his ex wives like cr@p, he’s treated his fellow Republicans like cr@p. John McCain is a better man that DJT will ever be, and think of what he said about him. For some reason I still haven’t figured out, the one guy immune from being treated like cr@p by DJT is Putin.
We don’t really know what conflicts of interest DJT and his family have.
I don’t think character and effectiveness can be disconnected. I think they are tied closely together. This isn’t a moralistic stance. Its a very practical stance. I want the President to do a good job for America. And not just for the 40% who are his base. I want him to work tirelessly for the country, not spend his time tweeting and golfing and being generally outrageous. We have a guy who I literally wouldn’t buy a used car from. And he’s got the nuclear arsenal. I also suspect he has declining mental facilities along with an obvious narcissistic personality disorder. So I think we’re in a far more dangerous place than we realize. Read the excerpts from his recent interview w the NYT. The rambling, subject switching, weird obsession on things like how the President of France liked to hold his hand, etc.
I just can’t believe this is where we’re at. I really wish I could be celebrating the Presidency of a Republican. Normally I would have been.
Personally I am delighted that this bunch of elected government functionaries are unable and unwilling to do much of anything. They can harangue and carp at each other – and I include the MSM in that all they want because much of what they do do fails, so we are better off with a do-nothing Congress and President.
Trump, like Obama before him, is a failed leader – meaning he has failed to motivate people to follow him and to do what he wants to do. Thus he’s reduced to the phone and pen style of Presidency, mostly reversing Obama’s stuff.
Bill: I can’t disagree with you.
I’m not quite “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Trump,” but I do see the Trump half-full and not half-empty.
I worried his administration would be much worse than it’s turned out … so far.
Which isn’t to say I’m crazy about how things are going, though I am relieved we aren’t barreling down a greased slide to become Mexico or the EU as the Democrats planned.
Hardee har har har. Nice sentiment. “Nice”.
We don’t have many common interests; and most are antithetically realized as the system has been “progressively” arranged.
So, for any stray progressives out there who might read my dismissal of this sensitive conservative’s wan hope, and wonder at it, I’ll ‘splain:
It is not in my interest to be forced to pay for your autogenic disorders; but it is the irrevocable position of every progressive and “good thinker” in the polity that I should be coerced into wearing the cost of your “bodies” (as you say) around my political neck like the morally festering and undesirable albatrosses you are … because … humanity … or solidarity … or altruism … or some similar bullshit peddled by simpering fools like John Rawls. Bullshit because the very people adverting to agent categories as if they are real on Monday so as to lay costs across the board, are subverting them [denying the reality of natural kinds] in the name of diversity on Tuesday, so that X, or Y or Z, can get a a ticket of admission they don’t qualify for, or an exemption they ought not.
So: When Trump works for the [assumed] 40 percent by sawing away at the noxious the traces that bind them to the dray-wain of the progressive agenda and the fulminating off loaded costs of you being you, he cannot serve two masters.
He either sets me free of your dysfunction, or he continues to perpetuate a system put in place by progressives that enables and underwrites your problems.
At least Christians promise a reward for putting up with the obnoxious. Progressives only promise a never ending hell of an eternally recurring same which they style the greater good.
If Trump could take the liberal MSM down with him before his inevitable political demise then he would have done a great favor for every non-liberal in the country. From talking to young people you could get the sense many of them now view liberals and their ideology as silly as hard core conservatives.
We have never expected that trump could advance the conservative agendas very far but if anything he could makes the left look as big a clown as he was that would be a monumental accomplishment.
Kind of the the Russell Crowe Character in Gladiator, he died at the end but he took the bad guy with him before his demise.
Dave, if Trump goes down politically I think the liberal MSM will be twerking on his grave.
I don’t see two many scenarios where both Trump and the liberal MSM go down.
The power of his tweets and taunts is linearly tied to his political capital. He’s spending his political capital very quickly. Ignore the polls all you want but his look really bad. For example, a strong and popular president can threaten Senators who aren’t falling in line (although most strong and popular Presidents are smart enough to do that in a far more subtle and/or private way than Trump and his Don Corleone act)
Trump and the MSM are in an unbalanced symbiotic relationship. He absolutely needs them as his foil. They love the ratings his gifs and tweets and attacks bring.
He’s not making them go away. He’s strengthening them.
Nixon’s demise didn’t embolden the left for long.
If Trump can twist the narrative as he was politically assassinated by the left because he tried to make America great again, the left would be forever branded as part of the deep state and they would die along with Trump, that is of course if the republicans are smart and know how to play their hands, but I doubt they do. hopefully Mike Pence or ted cruz does, they could turn out to be the Mark Antony/Octavius of the whole thing.
Trump treats people like crap? Bill and especially Hillary are legendary in their abusive treatment of staff, Secret Service, etc. Insulting them, swearing at them, throwing stuff.
Yes, it’s all grown quite, quite tedious.
…on the brighter side, I may have finally cured my news junkie addiction.
…and my landscaping project: my gawd! – Wonder of wonders, but I seem to have developed a green thumb.
Even a few instances of people in cars having stopped and voiced appreciation of my gardening efforts. (Yes. I’m preening lol.)
brdavis9 – great post! I think you have chosen well. I need to emulate that and take a break as well.
Related :
http://www.hoover.org/research/americas-media-meltdown
Dave Says:
July 20th, 2017 at 1:26 pm
Nixon’s demise didn’t embolden the left for long.
Got rid of the EPA yet?
Too busy winning, I guess.
Delilah Says:
July 20th, 2017 at 5:06 pm
Trump treats people like crap? Bill and especially Hillary are legendary in their abusive treatment of staff, Secret Service, etc. Insulting them, swearing at them, throwing stuff.
The SS are tools. They aren’t supposed to fight back.
Citizens that take the bullsh of DC, by giving power to DC and evil, you’ve already lost and don’t even realize it. Like Stockholme Syndrome, you keep voting in the tyrants in DC and then pretending to be the victim of it all.
We have never expected that trump could advance the conservative agendas very far but if anything he could makes the left look as big a clown as he was that would be a monumental accomplishment.
ironically, some people here dared to lecture me that Trum would be held accountable, because of the media.
In 2015, I was like “what are these mortal fools talking about once again”.
Bill’s greatest hits:
“But the Russian thing has bugged me from the start of Trump’s campaign. He swings wildly on everything else. On Russia he is staunch. Won’t say anything bad about Putin.
…
I don’t think character and effectiveness can be disconnected. I think they are tied closely together. This isn’t a moralistic stance. Its a very practical stance. I want the President to do a good job for America.
…
We have a guy who I literally wouldn’t buy a used car from. And he’s got the nuclear arsenal.
…
So I think we’re in a far more dangerous place than we realize.
…
Trump and the MSM are in an unbalanced symbiotic relationship. He absolutely needs them as his foil. They love the ratings his gifs and tweets and attacks bring.
.
Have to say what a keen observation it is that trump seems rather consistent pro putin, whereas everything else is up for target practice at one time or another.
.
Character and effectiveness are BOTH a moral issue and a practical issue.
It comes back to my favorite two words of late… credibility and trust.
Without those, no one person can lead, let alone persuade anyone of anything, including purchasing a used car.
.
Agree about risk, as there are many avenues that can take, and the trump supporters seem to be as obstinate in degree about ignoring it as the left is about over hyping it.
It seems much too early to declare that the danger we may have worried about during the campaign has passed.
The signs are mixed, at best, up to this point.
.
One avenue is how we are seeing some behavior that is rather opposite of what one would expect of a candidate who promised to “drain the swamp” would engage in once elected.
Transparency is a great disinfectant, someone once said – seems we are in some important ways getting less than when obama was around.
Even floating the idea of pardoning friends and family, even of himself, ought to raise YUGE red flags. It would if it were obama.
But, ho hum.
.
Which leads one to this dynamic with the media.
For trump’s schtick to work, there has to be an enemy. The more he targets the media, the less anything they have to report, even if it is rock solid fact, would be heard, let alone believed.
The second part is media saturation. It is even to the point that those in the advertising / marketing industry are having problems getting the attention they used to have and need for their clients.
These two feed into why we see folks want to ignore it all.
Discredit the media, discredit key GOP figures, discredit anyone labeled an “enemy”, and clog the air waves with stupid sh*t, and one has nearly a free hand to do whatever they want.
Everything becomes obscured, and confounding.
Big Maq Says:
July 24th, 2017 at 1:50 pm
It is amazing you can see that yet couldn’t see the onion plans of the Leftist alliance in time.
@Ymar – enemies to freedom are from multiple sides, not just one side.
If we focus on one side only, that creates an opening for another.
A great deal of focus for many has been the left.
They need no help there, and, in fact, piling on what we already are aware of becomes its own distraction from other vectors.
.
Also, “in time”, implies that a great deal has been lost, or nearly so (unless you are referring all the way back to the biblical “Garden of Eden”).
In a historical sense (notwithstanding the GoE), we are well ahead, but much work is still needed.